Perched in the hills of San Simeon, California, Hearst Castle is an enduring monument to opulence and ambition. The extraordinary 20th-century estate was commissioned by media magnate William Randolph Hearst, who created the ultimate playground for Hollywood's elite.

A work in progress for 28 years, the lavish estate grew to more than 80,000 square feet (7,432sqm) at a cost of over $559 million (£416m), yet today it remains an incomplete masterpiece.

Click or scroll on to discover the castle's storied past, its enigmatic owner, and why it's still a work in progress...

The origins of Hearst Castle date to 1865, when American businessman George Hearst bought 40,000 acres (16,187ha) of ranch land halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco. George's son, newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst, inherited the site following his mother's death in 1919 and set about expanding it to 250,000 acres (101,171ha). 

Hearst originally used the plot as an upscale campsite complete with platform tents, where friends and family could retreat from city life and unwind in the wilderness.

However, the media mogul's ambitions for the acreage soon grew loftier.

In 1919, Hearst approached San Francisco architect Julia Morgan to bring his project to life, though his initial instructions belied the elaborate scale of the job: "Miss Morgan, we are tired of camping out in the open at the ranch in San Simeon and I would like to build a little something."

Morgan was a trailblazer of her time; she was among the first women to study engineering at the University of California, Berkley, and the first licensed female architect in California. 

Hearst was impressed by her work, and Morgan spent the next 28 years overseeing almost every facet of the estate's construction, from the fabric of the buildings to the interior furnishings and grounds. 

Hearst named the estate La Cuesta Encantada, which translates to The Enchanted Hill. This image from 1935 captures the grandeur of the property, encircled by the San Simeon wilderness.

What began as a family home quickly became something far grander. In the 1920s, an airstrip was added to ferry Morgan, her workforce, and Hearst's guests to the property. By 1947, the estate had a total of 165 rooms and 127 acres (51ha) of grounds, including terraces, swimming pools, gardens, and a zoo.

Estimates for the project's final cost vary. Some sources suggest Hearst spent around $30 million on the property, which equates to $559 million (£416m) in today's money. 

These days, the estate is better known as Hearst Castle after its colourful owner. Its architecture was inspired by the grand castles Hearst had admired as a child during family tours of Europe.

Morgan interpreted his vision in a highly ornate combination of Spanish Renaissance and Baroque architectural styles.

Pictured here is the 68,500-square-foot (6,364sqm) main house, named Casa Grande, where Hearst and his companion, silver-screen actress Marion Davies, resided. The highly adorned exterior features prominent bell towers, alongside sculptures of religious icons, including Mary and the baby Jesus.

The Assembly Room is one of Casa Grande's most impressive spaces, where Hearst's guests would gather to socialise and meet their host. Measuring around 2,498 square feet (232sqm), the room is remarkable in scale. Its proportions are so large that phones were placed at either end of the space to allow guests to communicate with each other without making the long walk from one side to the other. 

Hearst took great pleasure in filling his castle with the finest art and antiques from across the world, and before long, the house was regarded as something of a museum. The Assembly Room alone contains four 16th-century tapestries, along with the Venus Italica, an iconic 19th-century Italian statue.

The stately Billiard Room was a later addition completed in 1933. It features a spectacular 15th-century Spanish ceiling embellished with decorative friezes, along with Gothic doorways, a carved stone hearth, and a Flemish tapestry from the 1500s.

In the early 20th century, such spaces were typically where men retired after dinner; however, that social custom was swiftly discarded at Hearst Castle.

Instead, according to Pat Lake, the niece of Hearst's partner Marion Davies, all guests were recalled to the Billiard Room after dining, where both men and women would challenge each other to a game.

The Refectory was where the castle's residents and visitors would gather for communal meals. Named by Hearst and Morgan after a monastery's dining hall, the ethereal space evokes all the grandeur of the Middle Ages. Engraved wood panelling lines the walls, which are decorated with colourful flags, while the regal room is crowned with a hand-carved timber ceiling adorned with saint motifs, which dates back to 16th-century Italy.

Printed menus from the 1940s indicate the schedule guests would've followed during their time at the castle: breakfast was served from 9am to noon, lunch at 2pm, and dinner at the unusually late time of 9pm. 

While the architectural grandeur of the Refectory is undeniable, Hearst softened the dining room's formality with playful touches. The 17th-century table, for example, was always dressed with ketchup and mustard bottles.

His son, William Randolph Jr., said that his father would put the condiment bottles out in much the same way he used to on family camping trips at the ranch before the home's construction. 

Curiously, paper napkins were used as opposed to cloth, reportedly because Hearst considered them more sanitary, plus it minimised the castle's laundry.

Hearst's dinner guests included an impressive roster of prominent high-society figures and A-listers over the decades. Pictured here enjoying a meal at the castle in 1933 are silent movie star Charlie Chaplin, playwright George Bernard Shaw, film producer Louis B. Mayer (co-founder of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer), and legendary American actor Clark Gable.

Though not all of Hollywood looked upon Hearst's masterpiece of a home quite so favourably. The castle is said to have inspired Xanadu, the Gothic mansion from Orson Welles' Citizen Kane, which was seen as a thinly veiled attack on Hearst and his empire upon the film's release in 1941. 

Given Hearst's penchant for entertaining, Casa Grande's industrial-grade kitchen was a vast space designed for preparing elaborate feasts. The kitchen's appliances, which were considered state-of-the-art during Hearst's tenure, are still in situ. Among the impressive selection are three Edison electric ovens, a Wear-Ever aluminium stock pot, and a Cleveland Range double pressure cooker. 

Much of the produce served up to Hearst and his guests was grown or reared on the farmland surrounding the castle, including vegetables, fresh eggs, chicken, beef, duck, and turkey.

The land is still an active ranch today and continues to be overseen by the Hearst family.

Hearst and Davies' private sanctuary was the extraordinary Gothic suite, which takes up the entire third floor of Casa Grande. The living quarters encompass two bedrooms, a sitting room, and the magnificent Gothic study, pictured here, which was Hearst's home office.

The vaulted space has a soaring, cathedralesque ceiling, built-in bookshelves, and intricately engraved woodwork. Several unique pieces imbue the space with character, such as lampshades made from the parchment of old Latin books.

While Hearst was a consummate host, he also valued his alone time. When he retreated to his study, even his son, William Randolph Jr., wouldn't enter without calling up to his father first.

Another key part of the Gothic suite is the Gothic bedroom, where Hearst and Davies slept for many years. The room is beautifully embellished and features a 14th-century ceiling adorned with panels of medieval figures. The masterpiece was reportedly flown in from Aragon, a region in the northeast of Spain.

Despite the room's striking architecture, it's far from the most extravagant bedroom in the castle. According to sources, Hearst didn't spend much time sleeping, so perhaps the space simply wasn't as important to him as other rooms in the property. Instead, he could usually be found working in his grand study or downstairs mingling with his guests.

In total, Casa Grande has 38 bedrooms, 42 bathrooms, and 30 fireplaces, plenty of space to accommodate visitors. However, the most prestigious guests would be hosted in the gilded Doge Suite. These rooms were the first guest lodgings to be completed in the main residence and comprise two ensuite bedrooms and a private sitting room. 

Initially dubbed the Royal Suite, it was renamed after its inspiration, the ornate Doge's Palace in Venice, Italy. The influence of the historic building is evident in the sitting room's antique ceiling, gilded finishes, and opulent silk-clad walls. The space has a marble balcony that opens up to panoramic views across the mountains. 

Pictured here is one of two lavishly decorated bedrooms in the Doge Suite, featuring a coffered ceiling, a stately hearth, and a hand-carved four-poster bed.

According to silver-screen actress Colleen Moore, if you were granted the honour of staying in the Doge Suite, you knew you had "arrived". Other esteemed guests who stayed in the exquisite rooms included English writer P. G. Wodehouse, American actor Ralph Bellamy, and famous cartoonist Jimmy Swinnerton. 

The castle had no end of attractions to keep its notable guests entertained during Hearst's tenure. Before the 1930s, movies were shown in either the Refectory or the Morning Room, but in 1931, a spectacular movie theatre was added to the property.

The space is clad in red demask silk and features gilded figurines installed at intervals along the walls holding fronds of greenery that double as light fixtures. 

Every night after dinner, Hearst and Davies would join their guests in the theatre for a viewing that usually included a full-length film and a newsreel. 

The Roman Pool is adorned with eight statues depicting Roman gods, goddesses, and heroes. Exquisite blue and gold hand-cut glass tiles from the Italian island of Murano line the interior.

However, Julia Morgan reportedly thought the finish was too uniform. The architect instructed workers to remove the tiles, add a layer of wet concrete, and pound the walls with their fists to create a weathered surface befitting of a historic building, before reinstalling the tiles. 

The Roman Pool was built as part of a wider leisure complex that also contains saunas, an exercise room, a handball court, and dressing rooms.

Outside lies the Neptune Pool, another iconic feature of Hearst Castle. While plans were initially drawn up for a rose garden with a reflecting pool, the site evolved into something else entirely. Inspired by Roman temple fragments he had purchased, Hearst instructed Morgan to design a palatial swimming pool where he could showcase the ruins. 

The pool was redesigned three times between 1924 and 1936. The third and final iteration, which we see today, measures 104 feet (32m) in length and features sweeping colonnades flanked by four Italian sculptures. The water was heated by an oil-burning system, considered especially innovative in the 1930s.

One of the estate’s more unusual attractions was its zoo, once considered the world’s largest private collection. It housed leopards, jaguars, chimpanzees, black bears, lions, tigers, an elephant and grazing animals such as zebras, antelopes, deer, camels, kangaroos, ostriches, and yaks.

During the Great Depression, Hearst’s lavish spending forced him to sell assets, and in 1937 he began dismantling the zoo, a process that took more than 15 years. Some animals went to public zoos or were sold, while others stayed on the land. To this day, zebras still roam the pastures of San Simeon.

While Casa Grande is the centrepiece of the Hearst Castle estate, the property is also home to three guest houses. Shown here is the picturesque exterior of Casa del Monte, the smallest of the cottages, measuring 2,550 square feet (237sqm) and offering four bedrooms, four bathrooms, and a sitting room.

The guest houses were the first lodgings to be constructed on the estate. Sensing that the mammoth main residence would be an incredibly time-consuming project, Morgan persuaded Hearst that they should start with the smaller homes so that the family would have a temporary base on the property.

Pictured here is one of eight bedrooms in Casa del Mar, the largest of the guest houses. It was Hearst's first bedroom at the estate, with the mogul initially residing here while the sprawling main home was under construction.

Hearst returned to the 5,350-square-foot (497sqm) home in his twilight years, when navigating the stairs to his third-floor suite in Casa Grande became untenable.

While Hearst's fortunes had bounced back after the Great Depression, he was eventually forced to leave his beloved castle in 1947, as its location was too remote to access the medical care he needed. He passed away in Beverly Hills in 1951 at the age of 88.

Until he left the estate, Hearst continued working with Morgan on its development. Though the castle looks largely complete, his ever-expanding vision was never fully realised.

Its unfinished state is evident at the rear entrance, where steel-reinforced concrete remains exposed. The structure, said to be earthquake resistant and clad in Utah limestone to resemble Spanish masonry, never received its intended finish in places.

Plans that never materialised included a grand ballroom linking the north and south wings, and two additional guest houses.

Following Hearst's death, his family gave the castle to the state of California in 1957, and the same year, the property was opened to the public. It's now one of America's largest historic house museums. 

While Hearst's labour of love may not have been completed in its entirety, the magnificent estate still stands as a marvel of American architecture and a testament to the media mogul's boundless ambition, as well as the extraordinary skill of Julia Morgan.

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